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The official Lana Del Rey thread; New album "Lust for Life"
Topic Started: Sep 27 2011, 12:15 PM (11,974 Views)
Riverwide
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4 out of 5 from Slant! :clap:

http://www.slantmagazine.com/music/review/lana-del-rey-born-to-die/2720

I was initially puzzled by the accusations of inauthenticity that were hurled with such vehemence and frequency at Lana Del Rey (née Elizabeth Grant) in the wake of her meteoric rise to It Girl status last year. Yes, her self-styled "gangsta Nancy Sinatra" persona doesn't exactly jibe with reports that her career was bankrolled by Daddy Del Rey. And I guess we're supposed to lament the fact that, unlike Amy Winehouse, she doesn't appear to have a predilection for dope or booze to back up her supposed bad-girl bona fides. But since when exactly has "authenticity" ever been a criterion in pop music?
More legitimately damning were the interviews and live performances that began to emerge in the weeks and months following the singer's inevitable courtship with the majors. Del Rey isn't completely ineloquent, but she displays a lack of understanding of her source material, functioning almost entirely on the surface of a persona that could have been concocted in one of David Lynch's wet dreams. The generous interpretation is that her creative choices are instinctual; the more popular, cynical point of view is that her aesthetics are purely superficial. Her speaking voice is high-pitched and girly, making her vie to be taken seriously by singing in a lower, sultrier range feel all the more contrived when she struggles to hit those notes in a live setting, as she infamously did on Saturday Night Live earlier this month, her enunciation twisted into an unintentional parody of Marlene Dietrich.

The enormous hype, to which Slant has unapologetically contributed, was bound to unfairly result in a backlash. To wit, her much-buzzed-about but abruptly postponed showcase in New York last fall pointed to a studio creation who might not be ready for primetime. But it seems unjust to hold an artist like Del Rey to a higher standard than, say, Britney Spears, who outsources everything including her own dancing, or Katy Perry, who even mimes her flute diddling, by sheer virtue of the fact that she makes pop music that's "serious"—or at least greater than that of the lowest common denominator.
Stacked with the singles "Video Games," "Blue Jeans," and the title track, the first half of Del Rey's Born to Die alone practically guarantees it a spot among the year's best, and it's only January. Del Rey's vocal performances are at turns haunting and vampy: She uses her impressive range to dazzling effect on "Blue Jeans," comparing her delinquent lover to both cancer and her favorite sweater in what seems like one swooning breath, and the album's tour de force, "Off to the Races," a theme song for the gold-digging coquette of some imaginary hip-hop film noir that juxtaposes a full orchestra and machine-gun barks straight out of the Portishead songbook.

It's easy to hear why Del Rey started singing in a lower register. Early, radio-friendly versions of songs like "National Anthem" and the unexpectedly insightful and poignant "This Is What Makes Us Girls" were so lightweight that Del Rey's Kewpie-doll performances barely kept them from floating away. The new versions, including a punched-up rendition of the formerly more chill "Diet Mtn Dew," are given the same lush-strings-meet-hard-beats treatment. Ironically, the album's sole weakness is the strength of its immaculate production, which can be a bit overwhelming over the course of 12 tracks (15 on the deluxe edition). The little flourishes that made "Video Games" and "Blue Jeans" feel so special are diluted by sheer repetition. A distorted, ghostly whine reprised from previous tracks distracts from "Million Dollar Man," an otherwise solid, bluesy ballad reminiscent of Fiona Apple, but most of the songs are strong enough to withstand such excess, and in many cases are accentuated by it.

The repetition of those elements in marriage with recurring themes of chasing paper ("Money is the reason we exist/Everybody knows it/It's a fact," Del Rey cheekily declares on "National Anthem") and escaping the fuzz is what makes Born to Die one of the more cohesive pop albums in recent memory. "Radio" is the kind of self-referential, hard-knocks track that will only further bait Del Rey's critics, and she fares much better when she sings in (or about) characters, as she does on "Carmen." A "Coney Island Queen" with a fondness for slipping in and out of red dresses is referenced on both that track and the first-person "Off to the Races," suggesting Del Rey isn't trying to pass herself off as something she's not, but rather, doing what the finest singer-songwriters have always done: "blurring the lines between real and the fake," as she says on "National Anthem." Pop music is all about artifice and escape, and "Lana Del Rey" is indeed an act.

In Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris, an insufferably pedantic academic played by Michael Sheen diagnoses Allen proxy Owen Wilson with nostalgia syndrome, a common neurosis that condemns the afflicted to a lifetime of pining for a rose-tinted version of the past that probably never existed. Del Rey may be the pop-star equivalent of a teenage girl naïvely playing dress up in her grandmother's vintage clothing and singing into a hairbrush that conveniently looks like an old-fashioned microphone, but that doesn't make Born to Die any less close to pop perfection.
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TheBitterEnd
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Gorgeous album. Every song seems to get a bit deeper with every listen. Gorgeous production and lyrics
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Absolutely! It's soooo addictive.
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TheBitterEnd
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Jan 25 2012, 05:22 PM
4 real 4 real

This makes me want to become a Lana Del Stan for the blatant game playing
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TheBitterEnd
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Track by track ratings anyone? Too early?

1. Born To Die 9/10
2. Off To The Races (5:01) 8/10
3. Blue Jeans (3:30) 8/10
4. Video Games (4:02) 9/10
5. Diet Mtn Dew (3:42) 7/10
6. National Anthem (3:50) 8/10
7. Dark Paradise (4:03) 7/10
8. Radio (3:34) 8/10
9. Carmen (4:08) 7/10
10. Million Dollar Man (3:50) 6/10
11. Summertime Sadness (4:24) 9/10
12. This Is What Makes Us Girls (3:58) 6/10

Bonus:
13. Without You (3:48) 8/10
14. Lolita (3:39) 6/10
15. Lucky Ones (3:47) 8/10
Edited by TheBitterEnd, Jan 25 2012, 07:58 PM.
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Probably too early, but what the hell!

Born To Die - 9/10
Off to the Races - 7/10
Blue Jeans - 9/10
Video Games - 10/10
Diet Mtn Dew - 7/10
National Anthem - 8/10
Dark Paradise - 7/10
Radio - 8/10
Carmen - 7/10
Million Dollar Man - 8/10
Summertime Sadness - 8/10
This Is What Makes Us Girls - 7/10

Without You - 8/10
Lolita - 8/10
Lucky Ones - 7/10
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bulgar
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i'd probably give some 8s, quite a few 9s, and a couple of 10s. this might end up being the album of 2012.
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:shock:

It'll certainly take some beating.
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bulgar
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Riverwide
Jan 25 2012, 09:09 PM
Off to the Races - 7/10
Diet Mtn Dew - 7/10
Lucky Ones - 7/10
:spank:
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bulgar
Jan 26 2012, 01:31 AM
Riverwide
Jan 25 2012, 09:09 PM
Off to the Races - 7/10
Diet Mtn Dew - 7/10
Lucky Ones - 7/10
:spank:
I was sort of trying to be harsh. They could almost be 8s!

7 is a good score in my book anyway. 7 is a B, 8 is a B+, 9 is an A and 10 is A+/perfection.

That's kind of how I grade stuff.
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Deelightful Bitch
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I'm stuck on Summertime Sadness. Taking my time with this gorgeous album.
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TheBitterEnd
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Jan 26 2012, 02:12 AM
I'm stuck on Summertime Sadness. Taking my time with this gorgeous album.
My fave song I think :D
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So what do we think the singles should be? We've had Video Games and now Born To Die. After that, I reckon National Anthem sounds catchy enough for radio. Beyond that, I'm not sure really. They're all really good songs, but will radio play them?
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Deelightful Bitch
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I don't know about the U.S. I haven't heard her played on the radio here despite the songs being so good. Goes to show.
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I just can't see radio playing her stuff a lot. It's much too sophisticated. Radio seems to go insane for fluffy pop or dancy club stuff these days.
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thesmu
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whatever radio station it is they play in my office has been HAMMERING Born to Die the last few weeks..
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:clap:

BBC Review
Intelligent, ambitious and brilliantly realised, Born to Die defies any backlash.

Jaime Gill

If you want an explanation for the unlikely rise of Lana Del Rey, it isn’t that hard to find. Ignore accusations of cynical marketing and inauthenticity, or speculation about surgery and Daddy’s money – that’s not important. And don’t get distracted by the YouTube statistics or the online hyperbole, this isn’t about new media. It’s about something older and more mysterious than that; the extraordinary, resilient power of the pop song. For all of her trashy Americana and startling beauty, if Del Rey hadn’t arrived last summer with a song as luminously beautiful as Video Games, none of this would be happening.

So the only truly important question about Born to Die is whether there’s more where that came from. Cynics look away: the answer is an emphatic yes. Nothing else quite matches Video Games’ eerie perfection of form and melody – after all, 99% of singers go an entire career without finding one song that good – but several run it perilously close, while revealing there’s more to her than the love-stunned torch singer of Video Games.

What makes Born to Die so richly fascinating – and what marks Del Rey out from the standard issue "I’m hot, you’re hot" pop starlet – is her preoccupation with Hollywood archetypes of American femininity, and her ability to shape-shift between them. So, on the stately, bloodstained title-track, Del Rey plays femme fatale, deliciously stoned and doomed, with an imperious vocal to match. On the addictive, sugar-rushing Off to the Races she’s trailer trash living the high life, her vocal veering deftly between husky cynicism and hiccupping glee; while on the tender This Is What Makes Us Girls she’s the poor little rich girl looking melancholically back on youthful hedonism.

It all reaches its apotheosis on National Anthem where Del Rey, dissatisfied with merely being an all-American girl, becomes America itself, offering up deadpan slogans like "money is the reason we exist" before demanding utter patriotic devotion on the swaggering chorus. If that sounds knowing that’s because it is, not to mention intelligent, ambitious, and more interesting than anything Adele is likely to write even by the time her inevitable 72 collection hits the shelves of the future. It’s also brilliantly realised, thanks to Del Rey’s extraordinary delivery, her ability to slip from deep toned haughtiness to breathless ecstasy to velvety vamping – often in the same gorgeous melody.

Born to Die isn’t perfect: it slumps slightly towards the end, and the glossy trip-hop production grows wearying on lesser gothic melodramas like Dark Paradise. But it’s the most distinctive and assured debut since Glasvegas’ eponymous disc in 2008, and makes you desperate to see where she goes from here. Del Rey’s defenders can take a break: Born to Die does their job better than they could hope to.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/qrnv
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The deluxe CD:

Posted Image
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The album slayed me once again while listening to it on the way home from the gym tonight. God it's so frigging gorgeous!

I also LOVE that album cover. It's sooooo effortlessly cool. She looks so regal and imperious. It's so bold and simple and stylish.
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